The year is 2002, I am early for class so I take this opportunity and sit in a window allowing my back to absorb the sun’s warmth. The heat relaxes my anxieties as to what lies inside the envelope clenched in my hands.  My fingers run along the edges of the letter I received from the U.S Patent office in today’s mail. Feeling a bit trepid, but also just wanting to get this over with, I insert a finger between the flap and the back of the envelope while looking around Arcadia University’s campus. Many students come and go, but one in particular catches my eye. Not so much her, but the art portfolio she carries, perhaps containing aspirations of becoming the next Frida or Cecilia Beaux. And with this my thoughts drift to the past 3 years and how they led me here.

 

April 1999, I’m halfway through my 10th consecutive 15 hour shift manually screen printing 10,000 t-shirts in my parents’ basement. The shirts will be used for a series of events to be sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Association. Each shirt receives a 6 color imprint on both the front and the back. The order also requires 3,000 sweatshirts and 4,000 embroidered hats. My tired arms pull the squeegee, lift the screen and wipe the sweat from my forehead. A process I need to repeat 120,000 times over the next 25 days if I’m to finish on time. It’s my largest order to date and the bill on this is equal to my entire 1998 sales. I hire 6 new employees to help print and load shirts while I oversee the entire project, meet my other clients’ needs and continue my 15 hour shifts pulling a squeegee with little sleep in between. It is hot, it is humid and I am exhausted just thinking I am not even close to halfway done. Fatigued as I am, about the only thing that is keeping me going is lying on the table next to my inks. A sponsorship contract for the Vans Warped Tour needs my review, signature, and funds. The deadline for the contract is just a week away. I am still slightly apprehensive about the dollar amount attached to this commitment, but on the other hand The Vans Warped Tour will expose my company “Kanika” (pronounced kah-nee-kah) to over a million people within my target audience in a period of just 8 weeks this coming summer. Unable to clearly think this through my mind begins obsessing over a recent idea to create a new device and method for tensioning a silk screen  that will increase the work flow efficiency within the entire screen printing industry. I must put that on hold until the Veterans order is complete. When will I have the time to get back to it?  My mind, like the machine I stand in front of, is going in circles. I tune back in to the pull, lift, and wipe process, realizing the vast opportunities that wait on the horizon.  I allow myself to pause just thinking about Kanika’s recent development. Smiling I sign the Vans contract and place the check in the mail.

 

Kanika, a company I founded in high school, started out designing and screen printing t-shirts for local bands and businesses. Profits from these jobs allowed me to invest time and money into an original Kanika preprint line which I began selling in retail stores around the Philadelphia area. Looking for a way to expand my market share to a national level, the Vans Warped Tour represents the exposure I want. With the profits from the Veterans job I will fund the Warped Tour sponsorship fees, rent the truck required to drive the 18,000 miles, and feed the employees for 2 months while they are on the road.  The money to be made on tour will be reinvested into my patent application and the prototypes required for market testing. The opportunity to build a larger, stronger company and move out of the dimly lit, mildew odor basement seems well within reach. It’s 10 years of work and sacrifice coming to fruition.

 

A month before the Warped Tour journey is set to begin a business disaster strikes.  The Veterans Association bounces the check that pays their final balance. I now have 17,000 imprinted pieces of merchandise unpaid for. I can’t pay my employees. I can’t pay my ink distributor. My shirt vendors hire attorneys. I already used the last of my savings to pay the sponsorship fee. My business diminishes to near ashes at this very moment.  Nearly bankrupt in the blink of an eye, I pick up a construction job during the day and complete t-shirt orders at night to make ends meet. However, these orders fail to meet the recently inherited debt and cost of a staff traveling cross-country  My brother, Ryan and 2 friends, offer their help by volunteering with no pay to follow the grueling eight week tour selling Kanika merchandise in selected cities throughout the U.S. and Canada while I stay back fulfilling our other contracts. I cancel the truck that I had reserved.  Ryan and his friends head to their first destination in Texas. It’s the  first leg of an 18,000 mile trip in a 1986 Chevy work van. A van that,by the looks of it, screams desperation. We fill it with Kanika t-shirts, a table, a pop-up tent and a pile of carpet remnants for a place to sleep.  While on the road Ryan keeps me posted- nothing to eat,  no where to sleep,  no money for gas, the air condition is broke…. Working long days and two jobs pale in comparison to his sacrifices.

 

A few examples of the hardships Ryan faced on his trip have been taken directly from his journal. I invite you to read them with the links at the bottom of this page (COMING SOON). My story continues…….

 

His honor of his own word, to complete the tour, and dedication in doing so truly inspires me. I gain strength from Ryan’s courage and perseverance, as I search for an answer amongst all that has happened. The solution, or so I thought, is to enroll back in school with the goal of earning a degree in medical illustration. I continue to work construction during the day and print t-shirts at night and on weekends. I devote my limited “free” time to school work and revisit my idea to bring a more effifcient method of supporting and tensioning a silk screen to the industry. This routine continues for 3 straight years….

 

I snap out of the story I have so many times painted in my head to notice the clock now reads 2:57. Class is about to begin. Looking down at the letter in my hands, I search hastily.  I hunt for the result of  hundreds and hundreds invested hours into prototype manufacturing, national trade show research, countless phone calls and visits to shops willing to test the screen and the manufacturers that will build it. I find it, “Congratulations!”  Satisfied I put the patent papers in my bag….never to look at them again. I head to class to figure out what to do with my life.

 

As fate would have it, I didn’t have much figuring to do at this point. The year is now 2007 and I meet someone who earns a living as an oil painter. He attended 7 years of college and graduate studies to obtain his degrees in the arts and painting. I immediately recognize his “success” in being able to sell paintings, but he is not successful in his painting. He has taken  a road that was paved for him.

That road instructs him on how to construct ideas.  His paintings are an incomprehensive exercise in mark making being filled with grandeur thoughts of educated theories and speculations. Verbal applications of “here is what you see” with no relevance to the space and the impressions of the brush on canvas. There exists no tangible correlation between substance and ideas in this characters’ “art”.

 

I can’t go on to say “I knew at this moment”, but it certainly peeked my interests in oil painting.. My experiences in business, graphic design and studies in premedical illustration provide a solid foundation on which to build my ideas and feelings. Painting is evolving into a unique and fulfilling art form for me.  My art interperts places and people I love. Their representation comes alive on canvas by manipulating color and movement capturing the essence of life. I cannot put into words the enjoyment I find in creating these paintings. I want you to share this with me and I only hope that you can find a fraction of that enjoyment when looking at them.